Against the backdrop of the U.S war in Afghanistan ending and the country’s subsequent takeover by the Taliban, director Greg Barker’s timely but ultimately uneven documentary takes viewer back to where it all started. He focuses on John Walker Lindh, an American-born Taliban fighter from Marin County, California, and gives audiences an inside look into the events surrounding Lindh’s capture, his trial, and the immense media frenzy and jingoism it catalyzed.

For a film that is supposed to explore the motivations behind Lindh’s decision to defect to the Taliban, little time is dedicated to his background. Much of Lindh’s story is told while he is imprisoned, not long after he is captured. He lays on a cot, face blackened by gun powder, eyes still wide—as if in a sort of detached trance—as U.S military medics and CNN journalist Robert Pelton interview him. From there, we are transported to the grainy footage of the prison uprisings in Qala-i-Jangi, which lead to a deadly fight that claimed the life of CIA officer Mike Spann. The filmmakers then examine the question of Lindh’s involvement in Spann’s death.

Here, the film is at its most compelling. Footage of the battle between the U.S.-aligned Northern Alliance troops, the CIA, and the Taliban are documented in disturbing and up-close detail. It feels more like Sebastian Junger and the late Tim Hetherington’s raw and powerful documentary, Restrepo, in which gun battles are right in your face. At times, you wonder if the camera man even makes it out alive. The bravery of the various journalists documenting this is indeed unparalleled and commendable.

But where Detainee 001 succeeds in coherently piecing together the chaotic and disjointed uprising in Qala-i-Jangi and the players involved, it flails when trying to connect the event with Lindh, as a possible symbol of masculine alienation and reactionary extremism, and the larger story about the war on terror and its consequences for the world.

Almost no time is allotted to explaining the historic events leading to the formation of the Taliban, which would help clarify many of the more macro issues that the film tries to connect via Lindh’s story—no explanation on the coup of Afghanistan in 1973, the subsequent Saur Revolution, the Soviet invasion, or the U.S funding of the Mujahideen (which would later become the Taliban). Nor is there a mention of U.S and Northern Alliance war crimes. Without these crucial details, the overall message is blunted and incomplete.

The main subjects interviewed throughout are mostly mainstream institutional figures—CNN and New York Times journalists, CIA agents, and lawyers. In one of the closing interviews, a British journalist describes how most of the Taliban fighters he had met were men under 30 years old, and that they should’ve “grown out of it.” This response pretty much sums up the film. It tries to parse out lessons from an incredibly complicated conflict, though often acting as if the tragic events of 9/11 and their aftermath happened in a vacuum. Without more context, Detainee 001 ends up feeling like a reductive reflection on a war where noble intentions went awry.